Barely 8 months before he died, Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Virginia politician William Giles about the threat posed by the usurpation of states rights by a growing federal power. He identified federal powers claimed under the commerce and general welfare clauses as especially dangerous.

On December 5, 1933, the 18th amendment was repealed bythe 21st amendment, ending prohibition. What most people don’t know is that state and local nullification created the atmosphere where this repeal was inevitable.

In her pioneering book, History of the American Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) asks why people are so willing to obey the government and answers that it is supineness, fear of resisting, and the long habit of obedience.

It has been 227 years since August 23, 1787, but the debates that occupied the 50 or so delegates present that day at the so-called Federal Convention in Philadelphia can still be heard in Congress today.

On that hot summer day, representatives confronted the delicate and divisive issue of state sovereignty.